“First: To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless, from the indignities, wrongs, and outrages of the lawless, the violent, and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate…”

In the Reconstruction/Antebellum South, many former slave-owners and Confederate veterans had a tough time adjusting to living in what seemed like a new world for them. The people they had considered “property” a few years earlier  were considered to be socially, politically, and economically equal. The racist white men of the South were so afraid of black people, that they created an organization to “protect” themselves and their families from the “the lawless, the violent, and the brutal”. They were simply trying to intimidate the newly freed slaves in order to maintain dominance over them. The social, economic, and political change that resulted from the end of the Civil War was a major change for the South and the people that lived there. Lots of people weren’t ready for this change and were determined to keep some sort of dominance over the newly freed slaves, the KKK was an example of one of these attempts.